Saint Justin the Martyr

“St. Justin the Martyr (AD 100- 165) was born into paganism at Flavia Neapolis, now Nablus, in Palestine, between the years 100 and 110 A. D. As a young man he attached himself successively to the various philosophical schools, being first a Stoic, then a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean, a Platonist, and finally he came to know Christianity. What we know of his life comes to us mostly through biographical details revealed in his own writings. As a Christian philosopher he became an itinerant, eventually arriving in Rome, where he founded a school in which he had Tatian the Syrian for a pupil. The Martyrium SS. Justini et sociorum is the authentic account of his martyrdom, according to which he, along with six companions, was beheaded between the years 163 and 167 A. D., most probably in 165 A. D.

St. Justin was a rather prolific writer, but only two or three of his writings have come down to us, along with a few fragments of other works. The two Apologies sometimes reckoned as but a single work, and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew are extant in a single manuscript (Paris, No. 450) of the 14th century. St. Justin is regarded generally as the most important of the 2nd century apologists.” [Source: The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol.1, Jurgens, William A.. Slightly edited.]